Jane Austen is favoured choice for judges of bookish persuasion

Harper Lee and Mary Shelley are both well used in rulings, but judges quote from across Jane Austen’s oeuvreREX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Ruling on a protracted legal dispute between the American Trucking Associations and the authority that operates New York’s highways, Judge Colleen McMahon reached for Jane Austen. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that the only ‘functional relationship’ between the Thruway and the canals is that the former rendered the latter obsolete,” she wrote.

In this adaptation of the opening line of Pride and Prejudice, Justice McMahon was very much in step with her fellow American judges, who cite Austen more frequently than almost any other female writer.

Harper Lee and Mary Shelley — whose most famous works revolve around a crime — are both well used in rulings. But alongside them is Austen, who writes of English Regency drawing rooms. And while Lee and Shelley are cited…

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